Ah, no, maybe I wasn't clear enough. I meant there was more to them than just the flashy super moves. I played the Ultimate Ninja series pretty extensively on PS2 (I modded my PS2 for the express purpose of playing them, actually - so I would pick up the latest one as soon as it came out), and at higher levels of play super moves were rarely used at all - at least, they only landed infrequently against anyone who knew what they were doing at all.
Most of the gameplay was spent on combo traps and clever use of items. On the other hand, a lot of characters in the games were really, really unbalanced (lol Itachi, lol Gai) so they'd get banned from tournament play.
I didn't like the Gamecube / Wii versions so much because they felt much too floaty - like DoA with its endless air combo strings and weak methods of breaking combos. But I'll admit to only playing the earlier games in that series.
How was Ultimate Ninja Storm?